1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a suction nozzle, a suction device, a gas filling device, a gas consuming device and a gas filling system.
2. Related Art
Recently a fuel cell vehicle using hydrogen gas as a fuel gas has been ready for practical use. Stable supply of hydrogen gas to the fuel cell vehicle is essential to promote the spread of the fuel cell vehicle. At a hydrogen supply station for supplying hydrogen gas to the fuel cell vehicle, a nozzle of a gas filling device as a supplier is interlocked with a receptacle of the vehicle to fill the hydrogen gas accumulated under high pressure from the gas filling device to a tank of the vehicle.
In order to suppress a temperature rise in the tank of the vehicle during filling of the hydrogen gas, the hydrogen gas in the supplier is generally pre-cooled to around −20° C. to −40° C. During filling of the hydrogen gas, the interlocked receptacle and nozzle are cooled down by the flow of the low-temperature hydrogen gas. Such cooling may, however, lead to dew condensation of the moisture contained in the air on the surface of the receptacle and inside the receptacle structure. This may cause the moisture to be frozen in between the receptacle and the nozzle and may interfere with smooth removal of the nozzle from the receptacle. This may also interfere with exchange of signals and information via contacts between the receptacle and the nozzle. An exemplary technique proposed to solve this problem measures the temperature of the receptacle or the nozzle during the gas filling and stops the gas filling when the measured temperature is lowered to or below a preset level (PTL 1).